


Daryl's Secret

by mayrwyn



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-11-12 02:36:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11152434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayrwyn/pseuds/mayrwyn
Summary: When the tide had turned and it became a matter of clean up, Daryl looked around and found himself in an Alexandria made familiar.  What had been a foreign land filled with manicured lawns, swings, and obnoxious sweater sets had transformed itself. Alexandria wasn’t some alien world, anymore.  Now, with bodies scattered and the sounds of crying in the background, it felt almost like home.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Veers off canon after The Wolves attack. Prompt details in end notes.

When the tide had turned and it became a matter of clean up, Daryl looked around and found himself in an Alexandria made familiar. What had been a foreign land filled with manicured lawns, swings, and obnoxious sweater sets had transformed itself. Alexandria wasn’t some alien world, anymore. Now, with bodies scattered and the sounds of crying in the background, it felt almost like home. Like those who had once stumbled through the aftermath of being over-run at a camp in a quarry, people who still called themselves housewives and stock brokers milled around him, aimlessly wandering, not sure what to do now, deep in the realization that there was no safe place. Daryl resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he began a slow circle around the community. Every so often, he would pause, getting a better look at a body and sliding his knife in where necessary.

The third time he made sure a dead man didn’t stand back up, his hands shook a little and he went still, staring at them and willing them to steadiness before taking a deep breath and moving on, every step making it harder to shake the feeling that someone just stepped on his grave.

Something wasn’t right.

He was halfway down the main drag now, and had nearly come full circle. He hadn’t seen Rick, or Michonne, or half of the others. He hadn’t seen the kids.

He stopped pretending he wasn’t searching for her.

He’d just missed her is all. There were too many people milling around, too many bodies. The road burn on his arm throbbed in time with his heartbeat, and his shoulder ached somethin’ fierce. It was distractin’ him. Hell, he’d probably walked right by her. She blended in too good, wearing those damned sweater sets and the old lady pants. Carol did such a good job coverin’ up who she was he’d missed her.

Instinct carried him out of the middle of the street. He just needed a little space. His vision was going funny, kind of hazy around the edges. He found a spot between two houses, a nice firm wall to put his back up against. He would just lean for a second, long enough to catch his breath.

That’s when he saw it. It was a girl, too. Younger than Sophia, though. Smaller. The person it used to be couldn’t have been more than four.

He couldn’t stop staring at the damned thing, even though he knew it was making things worse.

Months ago, across from a barn, he put another little round scar on his body and he fell into the hurt. He forced tears to come, thought of dead girls, and cried for losses he could cry for. But it only bled off a bit of the pressure, it didn’t stop it building. It was moving inside of him now, pushing on his insides.

All he needed was a minute to breathe and to find her and see that she was okay and everything would settle back where it belonged.

_Easy, baby brother._ Merle’s voice was scratchy in his head. Somehow sounding both younger and older than it had when the man was still alive, a blend of the teenager that carried Daryl on his hip and the man who died to give him a chance. All the sins in the years between were nothing in this moment. _In your nose, out your mouth. Why ya gotta be such a pussy?_

Daryl obeyed, but instead of air he filled himself with the smell of death and rot. His mama’s ashes caught in his throat. Then there was the familiar burning behind his eyes, bringing fear with it. His father’s voice was so much louder than the anything real.

_What the hell you cryin’ for?_

_Man up, you little bastard._

_Quit your whinin’, ya pussy._

_Got myself a daughter, now, Darylina?_

He was suffocating. Spots were dancing in front of his eyes before he managed to force the air out. He opened his mouth, but it was already too late. Too much smoke, too much ash. His skin felt tight.

_Got myself a daughter, now._ His own voice, soft and awestruck, watching a tiny hand curl around a finger.

Daryl didn’t remember sitting down, but he was on the ground. To his left was the thing that started this. A pile of nothin’ he wanted to see, on the ground between the houses, legs broke but still grasping. Still crawling toward him.

Might be this time he let it have itself a meal. He couldn’t look at it, much less bring his knife around.

Where the hell did Merle go?

“Daryl!” There he was. Merle would help him. Get him back on his feet. Beat some sense into him. That’s what he did. He got Daryl on his feet.

“Daryl!” Wait, that wasn’t Merle. The line between the dead and the living was so soft and blurred that he wasn’t sure where the voice was coming from, but he heard it. Muted and barely there behind the roaring in his head and the sharp staccato of his pulse in his ears. Instinct turned his head toward the voice and then there was something to feel. Fingers on his jawline, soft and gentle. He flinched away anyway, but he still felt it.

That touch didn’t belong anywhere his head had taken him.

She was here. He would have said her name, but he still couldn’t get any air.

“I know,” she said.

Blue eyes came into focus, inches from his face. That no-nonsense expression was one of his favorites because it came after she found herself. It arrived when she stopped looking down, stopped avoiding people’s eyes, and started standing up for herself.

And just looking at her was helping. He was forming whole thoughts.

She was alive.

“You’re okay,” he choked out, surprised the words were understandable around the harsh sound of him catching his breath.

Something in her expression changed, some small flicker behind her eyes that almost looked like surprise.

“I’m fine.”

He was nodding, and damn if the air weren’t coming a little easier. There was someone off to the side. Someone not dead, and not them.

They saw. They knew how weak he was. Knew he weren’t fit to call himself a man. Knew…

“None of that,” Carol said, her other hand reaching out. She was holding his face between her palms, forcing him to look only at her. “Stay here with me.”

“That an offer?” he was closer to himself now. Air going in and out the proper way, his heart startin’ to slow down some.

For the first time, though, she didn’t answer him with a smart remark or a wink. His Carol was in there somewhere, but she was wounded. Hell, he was one to talk.

“Deep breaths. You’re not back yet. Come on, breathe with me.”

His eyes fell to her chest, timing his breaths to the rise and fall of hers.

He could breathe with her.

“I gotta get away from that,” Daryl said, wincing.

Carol’s eyebrows drew together and she cast her eyes around them. He saw the hurt rise up in her the moment she saw it. He looked away so he didn’t have to see it in her eyes when she looked back at him.

It was quiet for a long time.

“It’s just a walker.”

“She looks like Sarah Jane,” he near choked on the words, but he said ‘em. He needed to say the name, just one time, to Carol. He couldn’t put in words why.

He wasn’t looking at her, but her hands were still on his face and he felt her hear the words. Felt that name seep into her and settle, deep inside that place she had that stored the things they never directly spoke about.

“I’ll take care of it,” Carol said as she started to pull away. Quicker than he knew he was gonna move, he had her wrists caught up in his hands and he was looking at her again.

“You ain’t gotta. Just – we can go. Somewhere else. I’m good. Thanks.”

He wasn’t good. He knew it. She knew it. And yet when her eyes met his there was an understanding that went beyond what they said out loud to each other.

Carol nodded, once, a short sharp movement that acknowledged his need to not say more right now, and said, “This is a good place for Judith to grow up. Safe.”

“Yeah. Walls held,” he answered,“Lucky they had you to save their asses.”

He let go of her and she stood, then held out one hand for him to grab hold of. Giving him balance. Helping him stand.

That’s just one of the things she does for him, and Daryl wonders if she truly has any idea how much he cherishes it. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to say all of it out loud, if he’ll ever stop dancing around the edges of it. But something feels different today. More.

“Come on. Don’t think I don’t see that you’ve hurt yourself again. We’ll get that seen to,” Carol said, carefully placing herself to block his view of the baby girl on the ground. As they turned away she tucked herself into his side, one arm sliding around his waist to offer support. “A rocket launcher, Daryl?”

“Assholes took the bike. Stole my crossbow.”

“How dare they,” she said dryly, squeezing him tight. “I suspected, you know,” she whispered, barely loud enough for him to hear.

He stumbled between one step and the next, then took a deep breath and continued toward the sidewalk, matching her tone, “Figured as much.”

She hummed in the back of her throat, then said, “I know you.”

A corner of his mouth twitched.

They weren’t okay. But they were still here.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. I've never written for a prompt before, and to be honest this one makes me very nervous. Hopefully, this is at least somewhat what the person making the request wanted.

Chapter 2

 

 

 

Daryl blamed it on the blood loss, with maybe just a little bit of exhaustion tossed in for good measure. Or he would later, when his brain was working again.  For the moment, things faded away from him. The part of him that would usually insist they couldn’t trust these people to even make sure the bodies in the middle of the street didn’t get up again was silent. Every step took more effort than he felt like he had left in him, and if it weren’t for the arm wrapped around his waist and the shoulder under his hand he likely would find himself right back on the ground.

 

Carol was close enough for the scent of her shampoo to be detectable if he focused hard enough, though it was mostly buried under other, less pleasant and more invasive smells.  He allowed that scent to block out the whole of the world, and, sparing only enough attention to watch where he placed his feet, let himself be led wherever it was Carol felt they should go. A few minutes or a couple of decades after she found him, he put one foot on the bottom step leading up to the porch and stopped.

 

“Fuck.”

 

She chuckled beside him, half humor and half concern, “If you can’t climb those we’re going to the infirmary.”

 

Oh, hell no. There were more reasons than he was willing to acknowledge for avoiding that whole area.  He was barely holding himself together, and there were too many faces they hadn’t seen yet. Daryl figured as long as he hadn’t checked there he could just decide that’s where they were. Some minor shit, folks needin’ stitches or with head bumps or somethin’.  If there were more losses, he didn’t want to know yet.  No, he couldn’t know right now.  The most important thing was that she was okay, and she was doing better than he was at the moment.  The rest of it could wait.  It had to wait.

 

“Don’t need no Doc,” he said, then paused, “You hurt?”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

She wasn’t fine.  She hadn’t been fine for a while, but just for a little while Daryl was going to let himself believe her, because he needed her to be fine.  He wasn’t, and he wasn’t sure what would happen if they were both not okay at the same time.  They managed for one or the other of them to be at least mostly holding it together when the other fell apart.  Daryl didn’t know why he was having such a hard time pulling himself back together, but every time he stopped concentrating on his breathing it started to pick up speed again, and if he let himself think Carol wasn’t okay he was really going to lose it.

 

Daryl figured if he managed to put his finger on why today was different he might be able to shove everything back down where it belonged, but for some reason it just wasn’t in the cards.

 

It felt like another ten years passed between starting up the porch steps and making it to his first-floor room.  The room was supposed to be an office or a study or somethin’ like that, but it had easy access to both the front and the back doors so he’d claimed it’s leather couch as his own early on.  Later, he’d come back from a recruiting trip to find a bed where the desk used to be, and the couch became a catch-all place for his stuff. It was the most comfortable space he’d ever had all to himself, and stepping over its threshold felt good in a way that he’d never really experienced before.  He’d come close at the prison, but bars were not an easy thing to ignore when you’d spent so much of your life making sure you never saw the wrong side of them.  With a sweep of his arm he shoved the pile of clean laundry into the floor before lowering himself onto the couch.

 

“I just folded those,” Carol sighed.

 

“I’ll put ‘em back.”

 

She rolled her eyes at him half-heartedly. “I’m going after supplies. Take that shirt off.”

 

He closed his eyes and concentrated on tracking footsteps through the house.  He heard her make her way up the stairs and down the hall before they faded away, then distracted himself from her absence by counting off the seconds until he could hear her again.  She was halfway down the staircase before he even began the process of peeling his shirt away from his injuries.  He’d left it too long, and the fabric was well and stuck to him.  He jerked hard, taking shirt and scab off together.

 

His hands were shaking something fierce.

 

“Daryl?”

 

He’d lost time, too, because she was kneeling in front of him and the bag holding their first aid supplies was open on the floor beside her.  She had both of his hands in hers.

 

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m…” He didn’t know what he was, or at least he didn’t have any words for it.

 

“I’ve got you,” she said softly.  One hand brushed against the side of his face briefly. “This is going to sting.”

 

He didn’t have to tell her that he’d gone numb.  He watched her with a sort of detached half-interest she cleaned, bandaged, and stitched.  The little wrinkle between her eyebrows was getting deeper as she progressed.

 

“Wha’s’it,” he said, his speech slurring oddly. That probably wasn’t good.  She was awfully close. This close, it was impossible not to notice how different she looked. He might have said so out loud, because she flinched. “Used t’be, you’d’ve said some shit by now. I miss that.”

 

“Well, I miss a lot of things, too. We’re not going to do that right now.”

 

“As good a time as any,” he answered.

 

Carol pulled a clean shirt out of the pile on the floor and dropped it over his shoulders, frowning a little, “That’s going to pull on the bandages.”

 

“Leave it be.” Instead of forcing his arm into the sleeve, he tossed the damned thing back into the floor.  “What’s goin’ on?”   

 

She rocked back on her heels and raised her eyebrows at him.

 

“Your heart is racing, you’re clammy, you’re shaking like you’ve been out in a blizzard and you’re only halfway here. We’re not talking about me right now. Whatever happened out there that caused this? You have to do something with that, or the next time it puts you on your ass it will be in the middle of a herd, and I’m not going to let that happen.”

 

“Weren’t nothin’ new that happened. Jus’ couldn’t find ya. Everthin’ got jumbled up for a minute. Now you’re here, but you’re still not here, so f’you _ain’t gonna let that happen_ you’ll be tellin’ me where the hell you at.”

 

For a moment, she looked like he may as well have hit her.  One second she was giving him her stubborn look and the next she’d pulled back from him, turning her head too late to hide the tears she was holding back.

 

Son of a bitch.

 

His throat closed up and he stood, moving as far away from as he could in the tiny little room. “Sorry. Go on, then. You got stuff to do. Places to be. Didn’t mean to...it ain’t your problem.”

 

“We’ve lost a lot of people,” Carol whispered, still not looking at him. “Too many. But you can’t let me be that important. You just can’t.”

 

“Hell, Carol, been too late for that since practically the start. Most important thing in this world to me’s been you since before we even found the prison.”

 

“Stop it,” she said.  “I can’t be that important. I can’t be that for anyone.”

 

“Ain’t up to you,” he said. “I pick who’s that for me.”

 

Her hands had clenched into fists, and she when she finally turned to face him he realized that she was past angry.  She was furious, and that felt like a kick to the stomach. His knees were getting wobbly on him again, but he wasn’t sure how much of that was exhaustion and how much was left over panic from his earlier episode. He did know that the thought of his… _affection_ …for her making her this angry hurt in old and familiar ways.

 

He made a conscious choice to shove those thoughts away. After all the shit they’d seen together, he wasn’t going to believe that she was disgusted by him. This wasn’t that. It wasn’t a case of the dirty redneck bein’ good enough for a drunken fuck behind a bar, but not good enough to nod at when ya passed him walkin’ down the street.  Carol weren’t like that.  No, somehow he had managed to pick at a wound that wasn’t scabbed over yet.

 

She kept saying she couldn’t talk about it, and he understood that, he really did. But lately Daryl had begun to figure that there came a time when you had to talk about the things you couldn’t talk about, or you’d end up on your ass in the middle of a herd thinkin’ about letting one of ‘em have themselves a bite to eat.

 

“We aren’t talking about me right now, Daryl. This isn’t about me. That wasn’t about me,” she whispered.

 

Daryl nodded, “Some of it was. But weren’t _all_ about you. I ain’t got the first clue how to do this shit, y’know? But not talkin’ about it sure as shit ain’t worked out all that good. I don’t see what good talkin’ about all the bad shit that ever happened can do, I don’t.  It don’t change nothin’. And I reckon you done figured out the big stuff. My daddy was an asshole. My mama wasn’t any kind of mama a kid should have, either.” He took a deep breath, and forced the words out past the lump in his throat. “Had me a little girl, now I don’t.”

 

Her whole body seemed to deflate, and her bottom lip worked its way between her teeth.  All the anger and defensiveness was gone from her voice when she said, “Her name was Sarah Jane.”

 

Daryl rubbed at his eyes roughly, then covered his face with his hands. “I ain’t gonna do this by myself,” he said. “I do this, you gotta. That’s the deal. I an’t doin’ this by myself.”

 

It was quiet for a very long time, then he felt her move beside him.  The outside of her thigh brushed against his. “Fine. We have a deal. No one leaves until we let it all out. I don’t think either of us needs to find out who is or isn’t out there just yet, anyway. Not right now.”

 

Every muscle in his body tightened, “Shit, don’t do that. They’re all fine.”

 

“Of course they are. They’re fine.”

 

Neither of them sounded like they believed it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not at all satisfied with this chapter. I started out using a flashback, but that turned into a monstrous thing that was going to lengthen the story considerably, so I spent too long trying to make the conversation seem like one that Daryl would have. At this point, it's time to just post and move on. For what it's worth, here's chapter three.

Chapter 3

 

Time wasn’t behaving itself, and Daryl couldn’t say how much of it had passed since he’d covered his face. They weren’t touching now, but Carol was close enough for him to feel the warmth of her all along his right side. Tension was radiating from her in waves. He was focused on that and on searching for a way to turn the jumbled mass of conflicting emotions in his chest into words. Wasn’t he just thinking about how lucky it was that they never fell apart at the same time?

“You’re going first,” Carol said.

“Don’t know where to start,” he said softly. And it was true. He didn’t know what he was supposed to be saying.

“The beginning generally works,” Carol said. “Were you married?”

Son of a bitch.

“Naw. Nothing like that,” he scoffed. “Came by her the same way I came by anything else I ever had. Followin’ around behind Merle.”

“Excuse me?” 

“There were always girls around where Merle was,” he said. “They’d come around to party, be real nice as long as his stash lasted.” He looked at Carol, raising an eyebrow.

“I get it,” she said dryly. “So, you had a one stand at a party and ended up a father?”

“Hell no, wouldn’t touch those. That’s how Merle got the clap,” he said. “But that’s where I knew her from. My girl’s mother. She came around one night. Merle’d been busted, was goin’ away for at least a year, and I was pissed off and drunk. This woman shows up wanting to trade a roll with Merle for some oxy. Still swelled up and walkin’ slow from havin’ the kid she’d been carryin’, y’know? And I was drunk.”

“You don’t have to keep repeating that you were drunk, Daryl,” Carol whispered. He could feel her eyes on him, but he couldn’t make himself turn his head and look at her.

“Made me mad. Don’t know why, because I’d seen the same thing a million times. Or maybe it seeing it a million times was why, who knows? I hadn’t ever been that mad before. I’d seen her around, an’ I knew it couldn’t have been more than a day or two since she’d had her kid. Even started out her sales pitch with how she’d have to use her mouth ‘cause…anyway, it pissed me off. Made me think about how getting’ some pills was more important to her than her new kid, and it was brand new. About how she was gonna give it stuff in her milk ‘cause there weren’t no way she was gonna spend money on store bought baby stuff when she could use her money for pills. That got her all tangled up in my head with my own mom, y’know? What it was like bein’ little and starvin’ an’ watchin’ my mom buy wine instead of groceries. Hell, Carol, I was so drunk I don’t really even remember a lot beyond the mad. Know I lied and told her there was a chance it was mine, anyway, and she’d been so messed up so long she didn’t even know that there wasn’t. Said if she put my name on the birth certificate, signed away her rights, and gave me the kid, she could have everythin’ in Merle’s stash. He was dealin’ when he got caught, but the cops only found what he had on him. Had hundreds o’ pills hid, some cocaine, meth - and I knew where it all was.”

“Daryl –“

He did turn then, and looked her in the eye as he said, “I probably would have just run her off if I weren’t drunk off my ass. But she said okay. Sarah Jane was in the hospital because she was born hooked on stuff, but she would take me the next mornin’ and take care of all that. And she didn’t change her mind. The next mornin’ I was sober, and she was still there. Waitin’ to go. So I did it. Couple of weeks later, I’ve got a newborn being released from the hospital and no idea what I’m doin’, and come to find out I ain’t ever got to worry about someone findin’ out how I got her because that girl OD’d the day after I gave her those drugs.”

“That’s not your responsibility,” Carol whispered.

He sighed, “Don’t tell yourself that. I knew what would probably happen. She wasn’t the take some, sell some type like Merle. I knew she wouldn’t stop until whatever I gave her was gone. She might’ve pulled the trigger, but I gave her the loaded gun.”

Carol was quiet for a long time. “Real fathers, good fathers, they do what they have to do to take care of their children. You were her father, Daryl.”

“She was perfect. I mean, I didn’t have any idea what I was doing at first. I packed her up and took what I could carry and we skipped town. Went far enough that I figured no one would put two and two together and know things that would make her life hard, right? No harder than what it would be havin’ me as an ole man, anyway. No whispers from nosey assholes. I did handyman stuff and carried her around with me when I could. Found a babysitter in the trailer park we ended up in, for when I couldn’t. Old woman who kept three little kids in her trailer cheap to supplement her social security. Settled down. I swear, that was the best few years of my whole life. Merle got out and was bumming around, but I kept it to phone calls and he’d stop by now and then. Like a real life, y’know?”

“What happened?” The question was somewhere between a whisper and an order.

He swallowed hard, several times, then said, “Babysitter was really old. Merle called. Said he was on his way. Told me to get my kid and lock my doors. Said shit that didn’t make any sense at the time, right? Because there was some weird flu going around, but they were just talking about closing the schools. It wasn’t... Babysitter was fine when I left her for the day. I swear she was. Didn’t seem even a bit sick. And I had a good three days worth of work lined up with this suburban housewife, was gonna pay enough to make rent for the month.”

It wasn’t until he felt her hand on his forearm that he realized he was gasping in the spaces between the words.

“Her name was Gladys. The old lady? Sweet old lady, always sending ham and biscuits home with me when I picked up Sarah Jane. But she… I walked in there and she was - all the babies were – my girl was –“

And he’d beat on the Walker that used to be a sweet old lady until her skull caved in and she stopped moving, and then he’d beat on her some more. He’d still been beating on her corpse when Merle got there.

“Merle dragged me out. Knocked me over the head till I stopped fightin’ him. Came back to myself on the highway. Knocked me around some more when I tried to go back for her. For her body. Didn’t know then that dead ain’t enough. That…Carol, she got back up. I left her there and she was gonna turn. She could still be shufflin’ around…”

What little control he might have claimed to have was gone. Daryl let it happen. More than that, he sank into it, riding the waves of emotion as they hit with no attempt to calm himself. Everything he’d shoved away, every scream he’d swallowed, every reaction he hadn’t had time for, burst out of him. Everything that he had been so sure he couldn’t withstand rolled through him with such force that he wasn’t aware of the room around him, or Carol beside him, or the sounds he was making.

Eventually, he became aware of a hand in his hair. His throat was raw, he couldn’t breathe through his nose, but there was softness under his face and Carol’s hand in his hair, and he was too weak to fight the sensation as he slipped into sleep.

 

He woke with his head in Carol’s lap and her fingers combing his hair, minutes or hours later, embarrassed and feeling like he was trying to crawl out of his own skin. His head was pounding and every muscle in his body ached. Everything seemed muffled and distant.

“How long?”

“Half hour maybe. You needed it. And it wasn’t even long enough to take the edge off. How long since you really slept?”

“Years,” he answered. He sat up, but stayed close enough for their shoulders to touch. “You?”

She ignored the question in favor of shifting and stretching her arms over her head, then rubbing the back of her neck. She managed to do all of that without pulling away from him, and he shifted a little closer. Daryl didn’t like anyone touching him. He never had. But sometimes, and today was one of those times, it was different with Carol. He needed to touch her, just to know she was there. He didn’t think she’d noticed, or if she had she was kind enough to not mention it.

Now, thought, she’d gone completely still.

“We got a deal,” he insisted.

She started to scoot away from him. Instead of letting her, he dropped his arm over her shoulder. “Stay. If you can. It helps, you bein’ close.”

It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth, either. He wasn’t on the edge of a panic attack anymore. He felt sore and kind of empty, but he would be fine if she pulled away. Except he wasn’t sure she wouldn’t be gone forever if she did, and he didn’t even want to think about. Daryl had an idea that maybe all the space he’d been trying to give her hadn’t been what she needed. If that was true, it followed that what she did need was less space. He wasn’t good at less space, had never tried to be what he’d been pretending he didn’t want to be for her. One thing he did know, Carol would never take what she needed for herself. Hell, she might not be any more sure of what she needed than he was. But if she thought he needed it right now, she would give it to him. He couldn’t doubt that anymore, not after today.

“I would have thought you’d be running for the woods about now,” she tried for a teasing tone, but only achieved curious.

“Only if you come too. Got this feelin’ if I go now, you won’t be around when I get back. Could be paranoid, but I’m not riskin’ it. And we had a deal. I’m stayin’ here, and you’re talking to me.”

Carol sighed, then curled closer into his side and said in a small voice, “I’m never going to see Sophia again. I’m going to Hell.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here it is. This is the first time I ever took on the task of writing to a challenge, and it was a lot of fun. It took a bit longer than I expected, but in the end I hope it at least comes close to what the challenge author wanted to see. Thanks for reading, and I hope you guys like it. This was one of those instances where I knew the last few words of the story long before I knew the middle, but now that it's over I almost want an epilogue. Tell me what you think in the comments. Or say something else. As always, any and all reviews are greatly appreciated.

Chapter 3

 

 

_I’m never going to see Sophia again.  I’m going to Hell._

 

The words floated between them, chasing all the air out of the room.  Daryl tightened his arm around her, searching for words and failing to find any.  He’d been prepared for any number of horrible scenarios, ready to listen to it all and let her rage or cry or hit him.  Whatever she needed. He had worked out things he might say for various things she might tell him.  But he really didn’t know how he should respond to this one. Merle used to read the bible a lot. Had the whole thing memorized. And Daryl always had a bit of a soft spot for the story of Jesus. How he didn’t do anything wrong, but got betrayed and tortured and killed anyway, and still forgave the people that did it. Daryl figured that took some balls. And he liked how JC had hung out with everybody, even the people no one else thought was worth anything. But he didn’t go in for praying and church and all that. Daryl had always been more drawn to the quiet places in the world. The woods, the creeks, and the way it smelled after a rain. He was awed – but would never use that word out loud – by the circular nature of things. The way the seasons turned and how everything from the insects in the ground to the birds in the air were all connected together. He figured the truth was somewhere that all of that intersected, but he’d never seen the point in worrying about where exactly that intersection was.

 

Carol, though, she believed like the church-goers believed, and Daryl didn’t even know which church that was. Observation told him that she saw it all like some giant system of punishment and reward, but he’d never talked to her about exactly how all that worked.  If he had, he might know enough to know what to say now.  Hell, Merle probably woulda known.  He wouldn’t have cared enough to try to make her feel better, but he might’ve told Daryl how if he’d asked. He’d’ve given him shit about it, and made the whole thing into an opportunity to torture Daryl for a good long time first, but eventually he woulda told him what to say.

 

Merle wasn’t here to ask.  But it seemed like too long since anyone said anything, and she was goin’ to need some more proddin’ to lance whatever boil her soul had grown.  He had to at least try.

 

“That don’t make no sense,” he said. “I don’t know nothin’ about that stuff. Don’t know what’s true and what ain’t, but I know that if there are places we go when we leave here, you’re goin’ to the best one. And she’ll be there waitin’.”

 

The sound Carol made could only be called a laugh, but it was an ugly one that it hurt him just to hear.

 

“No. Not what after I’ve done. You don’t know what I’ll do, Daryl. I’m not a good person.”

 

“Bullshit, you’re the best person there is!” He’d yelled before he caught himself.  Damn, he really was shit at this. He sucked air in between his teeth, reigned in the anger that was always, always, just a hair too close to the surface, then said softly, “Sorry. You talk. You say it. I’m listenin’.”

 

Underneath his arm, her muscles were twitching every now and again.  He didn’t think she was aware of it, or in control of it, and she kept blinking like it would keep the tears from coming.

 

Daryl chose a spot in front of him to focus on, so she didn’t have to have him looking at her, and gave her another squeeze.

 

“I killed them. Karen and David? I killed them, then dragged their bodies out and set them on fire. I could tell you that they were both unconscious, that they were sick and near death, but I didn’t know for certain they were dying. I didn’t. Neither of them were able to talk to me, and I know now that it was already too late for them, but I didn’t know it then.  All I knew then was that it didn’t look like they would be able to get better, and that they were a danger to all of us. To my family. It wasn’t even about all the people who lived in the prison. I can’t pretend that.  It was about Judith, and Carl, and you, and our family. When I killed them? That’s when I lost the last of my family. I deserved that. We don’t get to choose when life is over, only God gets to do that. That’s why he took you all away from me.”

 

He sucked in air, “Naw, Rick done that. It weren’t his place, and I woulda gone after you if everythin’ hadn’t fallen apart right then. I’m not going to lie to you, you shoulda gotten a few people together and talked about it first. Went about it better. But what you did? That was mercy, lady. They didn’t have a chance in hell of doin’ anything but dyin’ slow. I’d’ve wanted you to do it for me. I know it doesn’t feel like that. But you weren’t the one in the wrong there. You ain’t lost nothin’. You seen how happy everybody was to get you back, right? When you saved us from them Terminus assholes?”

 

She sniffled, and burrowed further into his side.  She’d never been this touchy before, and it felt…different. He tried not to think about how it was different. He wanted _them_ back, the way they were supposed to be, and that meant bein’ something he’d never been before.  He didn’t have time for the squirmy, warm feeling that was starting deep in his stomach.

 

And it was damn selfish to wonder, even a little, about whether it would help her or hurt her to put what she was to him into words. It felt, a little, like hearing it might do her some good. But maybe she would hear it as him wanting something from her, and he didn’t. She gave him more than he’d ever had, and he wasn’t stupid enough to look a gift horse in the mouth. Wanting more would just take all the comfort out of her company.  It would make them both uncomfortable, hesitant and afraid, and it was better to just let all of that alone.  Still, she felt damn good all snuggled into him. He loved it and hated it at the same time.

 

Because the reason she was getting closer was because he hadn’t heard the worst things yet.

 

“What happened to your girls?” Daryl asked the question softly. “You gotta say it.”

 

“They weren’t my girls.”

 

The anger behind those words surprised him enough to make him turn and look her in the eye. “Looked like they were from where I was standin’.”

 

Carol shook her head.  “No. I tried, I really did. I tried to feel for them the way that I should, the way a mother would, but they just weren’t mine. It all felt like babysitting, and like I had been tricked into babysitting them on top of that. That’s why it all happened. Because I couldn’t love them right.”

 

“You loved ‘em. I saw it. Hell, everybody saw it. You loved all them kids. That’s why we all pretended we didn’t know what you were doin’ in the library.” He’d expected that last line to surprise her, to maybe give her a tiny moment to breath before she moved forward, but she didn’t seem to even notice the admission that her great secret hadn’t been much of a secret at all.  Rick didn’t know – but only Rick.

 

“Mika was too much like Sophia. It hurt just to be around her, and she made me so angry. I was trying to make sure she would be able to survive, to get it right like it would make up for getting it so wrong with my own child, but just looking at her made my chest hurt. I think, in time? In time, I could have loved her the right way. I told myself it was me just not loving Lizzie enough that made think she was an odd child. That there was something wrong with her,” Carol paused, rubbing the tears from her face and taking a deep breath.

 

Daryl could feel her breathing speed up against his side, and dread blossomed where there had been only concern and caring before.

 

_There was something wrong with Lizzie._

 

“Carol?”

 

“She killed Mika. Tyreese and I were just gone for a few minutes, to get water.  There was a house, and a fence, and they should have been fine for the ten minutes it took to fetch water. But Lizzie – she thought the Walkers were just different. By that point I knew that she didn’t understand what they were, but I thought it was just a childish defense mechanism, so she wouldn’t be so afraid. I thought making her feel like she could protect herself from them and giving her a little time would solve the problem. But it wasn’t like that.” Carol took a deep breath said, “She killed her sister with the knife I taught her to use and made her carry. She said that when Mika got back up we would finally understand that they were just different. She was going to kill Judith, too.”

 

Daryl felt like he was going to throw up. This was too much for him. He didn’t know what to do with this. If he said the wrong thing right now she would be gone, his Carol, the one that he – that was the most important thing in this world to him. He had just opened his mouth to say, _‘So Tyreese had to kill her,’_ when Carol spoke again.

 

“I shot a twelve-year-old girl in the back of head who still didn’t understand that she had done something wrong. I murdered a child in cold blood, Daryl. I’m a person who can do that. I killed a child I was supposed to care for. I don’t even know how many deaths I’m responsible for at Terminus, but I know how many I killed directly.  And I just killed more, and I would do it again if it meant I didn’t have to lose someone else, and then I’d lose someone else anyway. That’s the kind of person I am now, and those kinds of people don’t go to Heaven. Sophia wouldn’t even recognize me.”

 

His first impulse was to get enough room to pace, to wave his arms, to move. To yell at her for spoutin’ that shit, for not seeing the common thread through all of it, for being too hard on herself.

 

But then Carol was shaking, harsh sobs wracking her body, and instead he pulled head into his chest and just held on. It was only that he noticed he’d never picked the shirt back up from the floor, that he had been sitting here with her the whole time in only his jeans. He may not have noticed at all – and for him that said as much as the fact that he’d shared Sarah Jane with her – if it weren’t for the hot wet feeling of her tears as they seemed to seep into his skin, sinking through his body and direct into his soul as he rocked her gently.

 

He was speaking, but couldn’t know if his words were making it through her misery for her to hear them.

 

“It ain’t so. It ain’t. Never met anybody got as much love in them as you do. You got mercy, and that’s a gift. It’s how you’re made. Karen and David was an act of mercy. And so was Lizzie. I know that’s hard to feel inside of this guilt you’re carryin’ around, but she was sick and there wasn’t any way for her to be made better. Living in this world like that? She was going to die. I suppose it matters that there ain’t any doubt she’d’ve taken at least one more person out before she did, but eventually she’d’ve been too close to one of those things and they would have took apart bit by bit with their teeth. She was going to die, and you letting her go quick and painless was mercy. It was. And those assholes that came in here and tried to kill people? They’d done forgot they were even human at all. You were to ask the people they were in the old world, tell ‘em what they were gonna become? Hell, there’s a chance that was mercy too, but it don’t matter if it was or not. Because you were protecting people. Our home. Our people. You think God damn’s every soldier ever fought in a war? I read enough of the bible to know that there’s a hell of a lot of war in there. Hell, Angels is soldiers of God, and there’s battles all through that book. You’re good, Carol. If Heaven’s real? Ain’t no other place you’d be goin’. But it’s got to be a long time from now. You hear me?”

 

He was rubbing her back and her sobs seemed to have slowed, just a hiccup now and again.  Her voice when she answered sounded tiny and very young, unlike he’d ever heard it before. “You don’t hate me now?”

 

It hurt when she said that. That she would think it was possible. That it _would matter_ what he thought of her. Him. Daryl.

 

She said she couldn’t be the most important thing to him, and then she said that like what he thought of her meant a damn. He didn’t know what to do with that.

 

“Never. Ain’t in me,” he said. And to hell with it all, it felt important to say it. “And I’m real sorry if it hurts you, and if it does I won’t ever say it again and you can forget all about it, but I’ve got to say it now.”

 

“Daryl?”

 

There was so much fear in his name, he almost backed out.

 

“Love you more than I knew I could love a grown person. I don’t need anything from you, ain’t even askin’ for anything, but you gotta know it. Ain’t never gonna love anyone else the way I do you. Want you safe and where I can talk to you whenever I want, and I want you to be okay. I need you to be okay. Not right now, ‘cause it’s gonna take a while to heal up and I know that. But someday. I need you to let me love you, and to know it, even if you don’t want anything but some asshole to talk to about things.”

 

Damned if that didn’t set her off again, curlin’ up against him and cryin’ again.

 

“I can take it back,” he said quickly. “We can just pretend I didn’t say it.”

 

She pulled away from him and he let her, being careful not to look at her face.  There was a painting of a waterfall in the woods at night hanging on the wall across from them. He’d never really looked at it close before, but now it seemed like the most fascinating thing in the world.

 

“Do you want to take it back?” Carol whispered.

 

“Ain’t important. I said my peace. Up to you whether we remember me sayin’ it or not.”

 

Her hand on the side of his face was small and damp with tears and shaking slightly as she forced him to turn his head and look at her.

 

She was smiling. Not the bright, fake smile that she wore for the Alexandrians. No, this was soft and sweet and somehow a mix of joy and grief and the whole universe. Before he could begin to figure out if there was pity in there somewhere, she was kissing him.

 

It was hesitant and shaky and tasted like salt water.

 

It was perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Daryl had a daughter before the apocalypse and he has never told anyone. But one day he finally opens up to Carol and tells her everything.


End file.
